


That Which You Love

by WishingStar



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Gen, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Sad, This is not a fix-it, Unhappy Ending, and not my usual, it's more like Negative Visualization, note the archive warning, some of us deal with Infinity War by writing fix-its, this fic is a bucket of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-06 07:30:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14637033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WishingStar/pseuds/WishingStar
Summary: "If you can't do it, I will. We don't have another choice. But think, Tony.Reallythink." Cap winces; the mask slips and he's Steve Rogers again. How old is Rogers, really? Twenty-five, twenty-six? Tony never bothered with the math.Rogers scrubs a hand down his face."Is there nothing here that you love?"





	That Which You Love

**Author's Note:**

> A friend introduced me to this Avengers 4 theory, and I had to purge it from my brain so I wouldn't cry at work. So now you all get to suffer with me.
> 
> Consider this your final warning.

"Well! That's it, then. We're screwed. We are Fortune's bitch."

Tony stares across the wasteland of Vormir, the alien planet to which he and Captain "If We Ignore Our Fight It's Like It Never Happened, Why Are You Not On Board With This Plan" Rogers arrived after _considerable_ hardship, in a last-ditch desperate attempt to break Thanos's Infinity Stone monopoly. Where they were promptly informed by a gloating skull from Tony's early-childhood nightmares that the only way to gain control of the Soul Stone was to _lose that which you love._ As though people who come seeking cosmic power regularly bring their—their spouses, or children, or favorite pets along for the ride.

Maybe it doesn't have to be a person.

"From your silence, I take it you're _not_ carrying some secret souvenir from Peggy Carter that you were hoping to take to the grave." Tony tears his gaze from the horizon (god, he wants to _punch_ it) and toward Steve Rogers. "'Cause if you do, now's the time—Cap?"

Steve Rogers is staring right at him, face contorted into more pain than Tony has ever seen from him. Shit, Cap is cracking.

"Hey, okay, we'll go back. We'll find another way," Tony lies frantically, because if Cap spirals into a panic attack it will set Tony off, and the two of them curled up in fetal position on an alien planet will be even less helpful than... well, no, it won't be _less_ helpful than anything else Tony can think of. It will be exactly the same level of unhelpful. But they have some smidgen of pride left, between the two of them.

"S'no other way, you know that." Rogers shakes his head, his voice coming out rasping, barely audible. He draws a couple deep breaths, then squares up to Tony again. Tony can _see_ him pull on his Cap face. How has Tony never realized, that face is as much a mask as the helmet that goes over it?

"Tony." Only the drawn-out, deliberate weight of each syllable betrays how hard he's working to keep his voice steady. "If you can do it," he says. "It should be you."

"What, you think I have Pepper stashed in the nanobot compartment of my suit?" Tony snaps. Thank god he doesn't have Pepper stashed in the nanobot compartment. Although—no, he doesn't want to think about whether he ought to be thankful.

"I'd toss it the suit, I love my suit," Tony continues, to distract himself more than anything. "More than my therapist says is healthy. But the fact is, I've got three more just like it at home, it's not exactly a _loss_. So unless you've got something—"

"I have."

Tony frowns, because he wouldn't have expected Cap to bail like this, to ask someone else to make a sacrifice so he won't have to.

"If you can't do it, I will. We don't have another choice. But think, Tony. _Really_ think." Cap winces; the mask slips and he's Steve Rogers again. How old is Rogers, really? Twenty-five, twenty-six? Tony never bothered with the math. 

Rogers scrubs a hand down his face.

"Is there nothing here that you love?"

Tony thinks, as instructed, though he fails to see the point. His eyes wander back to the barren plain spread out beyond the cliff's edge. The shuttle that brought them here sits on that plain, a barely-distinguishable lump in a desert landscape. All he has on this rock is one alien shuttle he barely understands, the clothes on his back, one highly complex (but replaceable) swarm of nanobots in his chest, and one traveling companion by turns insufferable and—

oh.

Oh, _shit._

That look on Rogers' face is back. Tony understands it now.

"It should be you," Rogers repeats. "If you can."

But Tony's not—no, Tony is better than this. Tony spent a lot of time and effort—Tony built a metal suit, he took a new name, he flew a nuke into a wormhole and exposed a terrorist plot and signed his independence over to the U.N. and he did it all because he saves lives now, he doesn't take them, he is _not the Merchant of Death anymore_.

"Why should it be me?" he demands. "You think you've got the market cornered on the whole hero business? You think I wouldn't—give up my life to protect the Earth? That I can't—"

"I know you would. Tony, I _know_ you would. But the Earth needs you alive."

"The Earth needs _you_ , Cap."

"Earth got on fine without me for the past two years." Rogers' mouth pulls into a self-deprecating smile. "After I abandoned my post and took half the Avengers with me. And you have to make it home, you've got Pepper—"

"That's a low blow."

"It's the truth. You've got a whole life waiting, I can't let you throw that away."

"Last I checked, you had a life, too!" Tony's fallen back on that thing he does sometimes, where he carefully avoids thinking through what's coming out of his mouth. Because as much as his brain is suddenly screaming _MAKE IT HOME FOR PEPPER_ like nothing else matters, this isn't the kind of decision you make and then live with afterward. You don't run up a cosmic restaurant bill of _death_ and then stick Steve Rogers with the check.

"I've got something." Rogers looks at his hands. "I guess it was a life, at one point. Seems like it went off the rails somewhere along the line."

"So you turn it around. That's what I did, that's how I got where I am today. You can't turn it around if you're dead."And that's a flawed argument, Tony realizes as he hears himself say it—not because it's untrue, it's _entirely_ true, but because if he wants to convince Rogers to live and let him die, saying _someday your life might be as good as mine_ sends exactly the wrong message and shit, Tony doesn't want to die.

He's willing. But he doesn't want to.

Rogers paces a quarter-circle, till he's facing Tony with his heels at the cliff's edge. He's breathing hard again, fists balled.

"Cap—"

"When you get the Soul Stone, take it to Thor. He'll be the best one to instruct you on how to use it."

"I haven't agreed to—"

"With any luck they'll have the new gauntlet ready by the time you get there. Just—Tony, just tell me this. Will it work? I need to—I need you to be sure it'll work."

Tony's barely spoken to this man in two years. And for those two years Tony carried a flip phone in his back pocket: a reminder, at first, of how Rogers _turned against him_ , kicked him to the curb like last night's mistake. Then a reminder of how Tony tried to murder Rogers' best friend, because that's what Tony does, he burns bridges and engages in destructive behavior toward himself and others. Then finally a talisman, a promise of future reconciliation, that could remain whole and safe and shining and unspoilt so long as he never made the call.

Turns out he had the right idea. Once made, that call led inexorably to this: to both of them standing on an alien planet, realizing only one could leave it alive, and Tony torn in half between a voice shrieking _make it home for Pepper_ and another one goading, challenging, _you're not the guy to make the sacrifice play..._

Tony only ever wanted to impress one man in his adult life, and it wasn't his father.

"It'll work," he whispers.

Steve's expression clears like he's received a benediction, and only then does Tony realize he never quite managed the words _I'm sorry_.

He steps closer, thinking distantly of a pat on the shoulder or even a hug, but once he's within reach Steve abruptly grabs his arm.

"Will you do one thing for me, Tony, please?"

Tony wets his lips. "Yeah. Anything."

"If this works. And you get everyone back who disappeared."

"We'll get them back."

Steve smiles like he appreciates the sentiment, but not the interruption. "Bucky," he says, and yeah, Tony should have seen that coming.

"I know he killed your parents, but it wasn't his fault. If you could forgive his part in it, for my sake—"

"Consider it done."

"Thank you." Steve squeezes his arm once, then lets go. Then he shifts his feet and clasps his hands behind his back, and after a moment's confusion Tony recognizes the posture: parade rest.

Tony turns and puts a few steps between them, just to give himself a minute. He just needs a minute. There should be—he should say something. He should make sure not to leave anything unsaid. But he shouldn't stall; that does neither of them any favors.

"It's been an honor, Cap," he says finally.

Behind him, he hears: "The honor was mine."

"On three, then?"

"Don't count. Just do it."

Tony whirls, his hand repulsor whining to life, and hits the center of the star on Steve's chest.

Tony wakes floating in still water, clutching an orange gem.

 

~*~

 

He finds Sergeant Barnes on the edge of a the Wakandan forest, sitting on a rock with his back to the city. Barnes looks up, trying valiantly for a smile, like his red eyes and tear-tracked cheeks don't give the game away.

When he recognizes Tony, Barnes leaps to his feet and flings both arms up, crossed with hands flattened outward, simultaneous _I'm unarmed_ and _I will block a punch if I have to_. Tony raises his own hands and retracts his suit gauntlets.

"Whoa, whoa, peace! I come in—I just want to talk."

Barnes lowers his arms, by degrees.

Tony sits on the rock and pats the space beside him. Barnes seems to consider for a moment, then sits.

"Mr. Stark. Is there something I can help you with?"

"I was thinking the opposite, actually." Tony rubs one wrist with the opposite hand, a nervous habit he's picked up in the last couple of years. "Though, you might not see it that way."

Barnes raises his eyebrows.

Tony takes a deep breath. Just begin. Beginning is the hardest part.

"I know Steve Rogers thought the world of you," he says. "Figure you felt the same about him."

Barnes studies him a moment, as though trying to determine his intent. Then he dips his head wearily. "What of it," he mutters.

Keep going. That's the important part. "I'm here," Tony says, "because you should know exactly how he died."


End file.
